Stay Out

I remember these signs from childhood. Typically, on one of my friend's doors, aimed at their younger siblings. Now there is one on our bathroom door. Aimed at...? I'm still not sure. You know, the kid spins these yarns in his head and sometimes I just can't keep up...

Like tonight. I was running exceptionally late starting dinner, due to the longest arctic trek to the grocer ever known (When the snowplows push all of that snow into heaping mountains along the sidewalk? Well, that's white, puffy, nirvana for this five year old. The Little Man narrated his way 15 blocks there and 15 blocks back, climbing, falling, grunting, grinning. Walking on the shoveled sidewalk standing beside those peaks never even occurred to him...) So, the soup base is threatening to burn (the UPS interruption was so well timed tonight) and the kitchen floor is decorated with every piece of sharply edged wooden fruit in existence (he's been cooking too, of course) and the cat is screaming some discontent about her dinner and I'm hopping around attempting Not to let the soup burn and chop other foods and ignore the cat and listen to the Little Man's story for BB, while dutifully delivering the lines P provides for his favorite pink monster, aka me. Typically not a problem (this isn't brain surgery, no matter how dramatically I paint my days..), I'm just unusually tired and feeling overwhelmed in my head - and so I say this to the Little Man. I ask for 2 more minutes to get the soup together and then promise person to person play. "But Mamaaaaaaa!" he woefully exclaims, "I could forget my story by then!" Good point :)

So, I probably missed the story for the door warning too (I know - this sounds like I'm such a shitty mama, spacing out stories by my precious babe. I don't mean to, I promise! I dream of running to the computer and speed typing as he rambles just to capture the phrases and the fascinations. (Today's favorite? "And then a feeling of dread falls over BB." But that's all I've got - the rest of the story was lost :) I try for eye contact and nods and repeated phrases... But by six o'clock sometimes, well, my wee brain appears full to capacity until I zone for at least 5...) And that stay out sign was an evening request, so...

Or, it's also possible, it's just a way to savor his new fascination with secrets. The quiet conveyance of classified information is listed as developmentally appropriate in the 5's book, but I assumed we would miss this since he isn't in kindergarten. Nope! Apparently there's something innate to this one, cuz the kid is captured by the quiet whisper. Its not mean spirited, in any sense. He's not looking and giggling, looking back and giggling. These are secrets. Something private. Something private that he's wiling to share, but only with This One Person. It's not exclusive really... and yet it is :) And, typically, it excludes Ethan. On occasion, when entranced by something he knows I'm uncomfortable with (like asking someone to give him their toy, for, like, forever...), then I'm excluded (d'oh! hiding from what he deems to be my disappointment? Or my interference? Either way, going to have to dwell on that one...)

These days, all secrets manifest the same here: A throaty whisper, directly into an ear, that is simultaneously impossible to understand and unbelievably ticklish. And it seems his sound gauge isn't set quite yet. The whisper is either pin soft, and thus totally inaudible, or a solid stage whisper that accidentally includes the excluded. As yet, 007 we are not...

As for the sign, I'll have to ask him the back story and hope he isn't hurt :) Apparently, it didn't play a very big role in whatever plot BB was playing, as its been hanging there for over a week with nary a word since. Oh, and he hasn't actually excluded anyone from the bathroom based on the secretive sign either, so its purpose really remains a mystery....